Cultural Competency In The Military

In today’s age, businesses and organizations who have effectively and efficiently integrated multinational culture into a strategic vision are more often than not extremely successful. These multinational teams present organizations with the opportunity to expand on a global scale while meeting and exceeding the standards of new challenges (Lewis, 2012). The United States Army has operated on a global scale for over 200 years. However as the battlefield has expanded and has become more complex, the need to develop cultural competency in Soldiers has grown exponentially. The Army has been an integral part of the Global War on Terrorism since October, 2001 with no apparent end in sight. To meet the demands of a rapidly deployable force, the

Soldiers are being asked to operate in very complex situations on today’s modern battlefield; therefore preparedness for a myriad of missions requires a high level of training. As a former observer controller who has worked at a combat training center for over three years, I can say that these training scenarios are very real and designed to push leaders and their Soldiers to the limits prior to completion. As trainers of the unit, we were required to develop scenarios around a unit’s particular future mission in order to validate their standard operating procedures. This validation was designed to stimulate creative learning/problem solving in an environment where the bullets are not real and the wounds were non-life threatening. The Army understood early on, in order to defeat an enemy that was very skilled in information operations/dissemination, we must become culturally involved. This multicultural involvement led to an in-depth study on international culture and integrating our Soldiers with local national forces in order to accomplish our mission. Personnel who were raised abroad and moved to the United States and received citizenship were added to training scenarios in order to facilitate cultural advisement/training and add a realistic approach to our training. These role players were

With this in mind, small units of international police forces or local national Army units who US Soldiers would be expected to partner with were brought to the combat training centers in the United States and Europe so that US units could begin to develop a working relationship and develop an effective multicultural team. As the US units would be the actual unit in charge of operations during the actual combat deployment, it was necessary to assess and properly train these international forces to a basic level that would be necessary to exercise mission command over them. This training proved to be very beneficial as Soldiers were given the opportunity to lead and manage foreign Soldiers, thereby creating a cultural understanding that served to strengthen the alliance between these nations and develop a common operating